1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to the field of communications for the hearing impaired, and, more particularly, to intelligent electronic phonebook entries in a communication device utilized by hearing impaired users.
2. State of the Art
It is apparent that many individuals with significant hearing loss are not able to communicate effectively over conventional telephone systems that rely upon voice communications. Since the early 1960's, devices have been available for facilitating the communication between hearing and hearing-impaired users.
The hearing-impaired user would utilize a teletypewriter (TTY) to communicate over the telephone lines. Such devices, known as TDD's or Telephone Devices for the Deaf are configured to allow a hearing-impaired user to type a message on a keyboard that is then sent to the receiving user. Upon receipt of the coded signal, the signal is decoded and displayed on a message terminal. The receiving party may thereafter respond using a similar procedure. It should be apparent that such a communication approach is slow and cumbersome. Standardized methodologies have been developed for enabling a hearing-impaired user equipped with a TDD to communicate telephonically with normal hearing individuals not equipped with an equivalent device. To provide such a capability, relay services have been established and staffed with interpreters equipped to receive phone calls from either the hearing-impaired user as initiated using a TDD or from a hearing-capable user using conventional voice telephony. The relay interpreters function is to establish a communication session between the calling and called parties and to thereafter serve as an interpreter between the users. In a typical conversation utilizing the relay services, the hearing-impaired user enters keystrokes which in turn send a message to the relay services interpreter who then voices the received text-based message to the hearing party over a voice-based communication channel. A hearing-capable user thereupon may voice a response to the relay services interpreter who in turn enters keystrokes which form a text based message which is delivered to the hearing-impaired user and presented on the TDD device. Such a process continues for the duration of the conversation or communication session.
While TDD devices facilitate communication with at least one hearing-impaired user, they're limited in fulfilling various needs of hearing-impaired users and more particularly in providing communication options for hearing-impaired individuals having varying degrees of impairment. For example, a hearing-impaired individual, while being impaired as to the hearing or receiving of audio signals, may in fact be capable of generating adequate voice communication that is adequately intelligible so as to be comprehended by a hearing-capable party. In fact a significant number of hearing-impaired individuals have the ability to intelligibly speak but their hearing is inadequate for conventional communications over voice telephony. For efficiency as well as other reasons, such speech-capable hearing-impaired individuals regularly desire to converse using voice-based responses.
Extensions of relay services have included the development of voice bridges known as “Voice Carry-Over” (VCO) which enable the voice-capable hearing-impaired individual to speak directly to the hearing party. In such an application, the relay service interpreter is instructed that the hearing-impaired user desires the formation of the voice bridge or conferencing of the voice-capable hearing-impaired user's voice. In such a service configuration, once the conference call is established, the relay service interpreter is employed only for the conversion of the voice portion of the call that is to be delivered to the hearing-impaired user. It should be apparent that not all hearing-impaired individuals have adequate or intelligible speech capabilities for utilization of a relay service configured to provide VCO services. However, such an arrangement does provide a more efficient method of communication between a voice-capable hearing-impaired user and another individual. Therefore, the VCO interpretive service has become a conventional feature in most relay services.
As stated, hearing-impaired individuals have differing capacities for hearing and speaking. Additionally, households or institutions may have hearing-impaired users of differing capacities which utilize or share common equipments. Therefore, there is a need to enable the configuration of equipments to specify or request varying levels of relay services as initiated from a common or shared communication device.